The Latest Miami-Illinois Dictionary and its Author

Transcription

1 The Latest Miami-Illinois Dictionary and its Author MICHAEL MCCAFFERTY Indiana University In December 1999,1 asked David Costa if there was anything I could do for him during a planned visit to the Jesuit archive at St-Jerome, Quebec. 1 Half-jokingly, he asked me to find another Illinois dictionary to add to those at the Watkinson Library, written out by an unknown Jesuit scribe (c , traditionally attributed to Jacques Gravier), and at the John Carter Brown Library, transcribed by the Jesuit missionary Jean-Baptiste Antoine Robert Le Boullenger (c. 1720). Because of Costa's suggestion, we now know of a third such dictionary. The new dictionary has 672 pages, arranged by French keywords. As Ifirst examined it in the archive, I found a few notes left behind in its pages by scholars who had come across the book in the past. They all said that the language was unknown to them. For example, Father Joseph Richard wrote in 1916, in English, "Dictionary of one of the Algic languages, with some similarity to the Odjibwe, which is it, I cannot tell." Having studied the Miami-Illinois language since 1975, my first impression was that it was Miami-Illinois. However, it seemed that the Jesuits would have been able to identify the language used in one of their major missionary efforts in the New World. Certain morphological clues suggested that the manuscript might be Sauk-Fox-Mascouten. Among the early Jesuits in the West, Claude-Jean Allouez had spent some time with the Fox and the Mascouten and Jean Mermet had spent two years with the Mascouten. To settle the matter, I looked up the French entries for lexical items that are unique, among the Algonquian languages, to Miami-Illinois, such as paapankamwita 'fox', and indeed found <papangam8ita>. Another term unique to Miami-Illinois, miincipi 'corn', confirmed the identification. 1. The permission of the Archives de la Compagnie de Jesus, Province du Canada francais (ASJCF) and the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (ARSI) to reproduce the handwriting samples that accompany this paper is gratefully acknowledged, as is the invaluable graphical assistance of Duane Esarey (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill). 2. The pagination of the manuscript, referred to in the present volume as Pinet c , has been added in an archivist's hand. Papers of the 36th Algonquian Conference, ed. H.C. Wolfart (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 2005), pp

3 THE LATEST MIAMI-ILLINOIS DICTIONARY AND ITS AUTHOR i Figure 2. St-Jerome dictionary, extract from p. 446 showing the handwriting of Pierre-Francois Pinet (ASJCF). How the dictionary ended up in the Jesuit archive at St-Jerome is still a mystery. The archivist, Isabelle Contant (personal communication, 2004), says that the book does not appear in their listing of documents from before According to existing records, it did not come from the Seminaire de Quebec, Laval University or the archbishopric of Quebec. The dictionary at some time was given to the College Ste-Marie in Montreal, as indicated by undated stamps of the college that appear in the dictionary. Indeed, it was probably there that Richard saw the book in In 1968 the archives of the College Ste-Marie were moved to the Jesuit house in Lafontaine, near St-Jerome. Purely from a logical perspective, Contant believes that all the dictionaries in the archive would have come from the St-Regis mission, the Caughnawaga mission, or from rectories where the Jesuits had lived, as was the case with the famous Ojibwe dictionary of Louis Andre, which came from a rectory in Ontario. She believes that it would have been in this manner that the books did not become the property of the Oblate fathers, who ultimately replaced the Jesuits in all but two of their missions. By the spring of 2004 an excellent electronic facsimile copy of the newfound dictionary was made available on CD to the Miami Nation, who loaned hard copies to scholars working for them. Part of my work with

4 274 MICHAEL MCCAFFERTY the dictionary has involved determining the identity of the person who composed most of it as well as the identities of the three other people who added a relatively small amount of information. The book itself is now on loan to the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull, Quebec. As far as the identity of the principal hand is concerned, its distinctive character matches in every respect that of the Jesuit missionary Pierre-Francois Pinet, as seen on his vows dated 15 August Pinet, whose family name is pronounced with the final [t] (as in Jolliet), was born at Pengueux in southwestern France in He entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1682 and appears to have arrived in Canada in 1692 at the age of 32 (Melancon 1929:63). Workingfirstat the Jesuit mission at Michilimackinac in 1694, he was reassigned in 1696 to serve the two Wea summer villages located on the lower Chicago River, a stone's throw from Lake Michigan. There he established la mission de l'ange Gardien [the Guardian Angel mission]. French authorities forced this mission to close in 1697, but it was reopened the following year and Pinet was allowed to return (cf. Rochmonteix , 3: ). Although he traveled in the winter months (JR 65:71), Pinet's work among the Wea at the site of present-day Chicago continued through the late winter of , at which time he was reassigned to the Tamaroa summer village located on the site of modern Cahokia, Illinois (Garraghan 1928: ; cf. Palm 1931:27-40). It was at there that Pinet was described as "speaking the language [i.e., Miami-Illinois] perfectly". 3 Pinet remained at Cahokia until June 1702, when he was sent to a group of Kaskaskia living on the River des Peres within what is now the city of St. Louis. He died there a few weeks later, on 1 August It was probably on the lower Chicago River that Pinet began this "rough-draftfieldlexicon" (Costa, personal communication, 2004). Not only did Pinet spend over three of his six years in the Illinois country involved with the Wea, but the years with the Wea also represent his first assignment among Miami-Illinois-speaking peoples. In addition, Costa (personal communication, 2004) has noted that Pinet failed to mark preaspiration, which suggests a basic lack of familiarity with the language, as 3. See discussion of letter from Bergier to Marest, 15 June 1703, in Garraghan 1928: There is some confusion in the sources about the date of Pinet's death; see, however, mention of his death in letter from Bergier, 1 March 1703, in Garraghan 1928:128.

5 THE LATEST MIAMI-ILLINOIS DICTIONARY AND ITS AUTHOR 275 one would of course expect for a missionary in his first years among the Miami-Illinois-speaking peoples. The historical evidence suggests that at least some of the language material in the dictionary should be from the Wea dialect of Miami-Illinois. There is also a curious onomastic entry in Pinet's dictionary that seems to support the Wea dialect theory. This is the name given for the Illinois River. Under the French entry Riviere des Islinois (537) is the gloss <in8ca asipi8mi>, which literally means Tnoka's river,' Inoka being the singular form of the self-designation of the Illinois, which included the Kaskaskia and Peoria, but not the Wea. In giving rivers ethnonymic labels, Algonquian-speaking groups generally choose the names of tribes that the rivers lead to or come from. In other words, Algonquian groups are not in the habit of naming rivers after themselves. For example, in the mid-18th century and beyond, the Miami referred to the Maumee River as taawaawa siipiiwi 'Ottawa River', 5 since the Ottawa were living downstream from them, while the Ottawa referred to the same watercourse as maamii ziibi 'Miami River' (whence the modern name Maumee) since the Miami were living upstream from them. Therefore, the appearance of the hydronym <in8ca asipi8mi> in Pinet's dictionary seems to imply that whoever gave him this expression was not an Illinois speaker but rather someone talking about the Illinois, and probably, given Pinet's personal history, a Wea. 6 Although this hydronym was copied by Le Boullenger (160), who was with the Kaskaskia, the name wasfirstrecorded by Pinet, whose mission was among the Wea. Three other hands appear in the new-found dictionary, but the amount of information they add is relatively small. Among these, the handwriting of Jean Mermet appears on 118 pages. Mermet, who was four years younger than Pinet, came to Canada in 1698 (Melancon 1929:57). He replaced Pinet among the Wea at the Chicago River mission in 1700, 5. In Miami-Illinois hydronyms, animate nouns functioning as thefirst member of a compound appear in the proximate singular form; this pattern is well-attested in recordings of native speakers, e.g., kineepikwameekwa siipiiwi 'eel river'. 6. The historical Wea were a Miami subgroup; Pierre-Charles deliette, who arrived in the Illinois country in 1687 and spent four years with the Wea, notes that the Miami at la mission de l'ange Gardien were the Wea band, and that they had been there for ten or twelve years; cf. Delliette [sic] 1934:392. St-Cosme says all the Native people at Chicago were Miami (cf. Kellogg 1917:346).

7 THE LATEST MIAMI-ILLINOIS DICTIONARY AND ITS AUTHOR 277 and then, when it closed in 1702, went on to work among the Miami at th St. Joseph River mission in southern Michigan. However, that same year he joined the ill-fated Juchereau tannery project on the Ohio River, in what is now southern Illinois, where he ministered to both Mascouten hunters and French tanners (JR 66:41). In 1704, after the death of Juchereau in an epidemic, Mermet went to labor among the Kaskaskia, although there are indications that he made a detour to visit the Wea, who o by that time living on the Wabash. It was among the Kaskaskia that Mermet remained until his death in 1716 (Melancon 1929:57). Pinet's dictionary was, presumably, waiting for Mermet at the Kaskaskia mission upon his arrival there in It was only in that year that Mermet could have begun adding his own observations. Mermet probably also made good use of Pinet's dictionary, since Jean-Francois Buisson de St-Cosme observed at Chicago in July 1700 that Mermet at that time did not yet know Miami-Illinois, and he would have had only two years of somewhat sporadic experience with the language before arriving among the Kaskaskia (Garraghan 1928:116). The handwriting of Gabriel Marest can also be found in Pinet's book, on 25 pages. Marest was born in 1662 in Champagne and arrived in Canada in 1694 (Melancon 1929:55; JR 65: ). Like Mermet he knew Pinet personally, having arrived among the Kaskaskia in 1698 to help Julien Binneteau (Palm 1931:25; Chaput 1969:274). In the fall of 1700, after Binneteau's death, we find Marest working with Pinet on the River des Peres among the Kaskaskia and some Tamaroa (JR 65:103). Marest then went briefly to the Peoria before finally settling among the Kaskaskia, where he worked until his death in 1714 (Garraghan 1928:120; JR 66:253). Marest was recognized by fellow Illinois country q Jesuits and others for his linguistic acumen. 7. See letter from Mermet to Cadillac, written from the St. Joseph River 19 April 1702, inmargry 1974,5: For Mermet at Kaskaskia, see JR 66: ; for his detour to Wea see Burton 1904:234, also Craig 1893: JR 65:69, 66:25, 123. There are probably a few more entries by Mermet and Marest in the dictionary, but not many. The challenge in locating them is that Pinet was disposed to clogging his pages densely with data and the secondary hands are often tucked into tiny spaces within Pinet's writing, which is itself often of varying sizes.

9 THE LATEST MIAMI-ILLINOIS DICTIONARY AND ITS AUTHOR 279 Figure 6. St-Jerome dictionary, extract from p. 589 showing the handwriting of Jean Mermet (ASJCF). Finally, on only 10 pages is handwriting that is of particular interest, for it belongs to the principal scribe of the massive Illinois-French dictionary at the Watkinson Library, commonly attributed to Gravier. The "Gravier" and Le Boullenger dictionaries are well-polished works, and appear to represent the culmination of collective efforts of successive missionaries. Jacques Marquette was thefirst European to visit the Illinois and to study their language, starting in 1669 (JR 54: , ). There is no doubt that he and Claude-Jean Allouez, his close colleague and successor in the region, shared their knowledge of the language, as did Rale, Gravier and Binneteau who followed, with each also working on wordlists orfield manuals of his own. Given their common efforts, the veteran missionaries would have passed on these works to the new arrivals. Indeed, Gravier, well equipped with his excellent knowledge of Ojibwe-Ottawa, is noted by Marest as having mapped out the fundamentals of the Miami-Illinois language. In attempting to identify the principal scribe of the "Gravier" dictionary and the unknown secondary scribe of Pinet's, we list the 34 Jesuit priests who are known to have worked with one or more of the Illinois groups - the Kaskaskia, Peoria, Michigamea, Tamaroa, Cahokia, etc. - and/or one or more of the Miami groups - the Wea, Piankashaw, etc. Their names appear below in the order of their arrival among the Illinois or the Miami. 1! 10. See Marest to Germon 9 November 1712, in Lettres edifiantes :12; also Membre's account in LeClerq 1881, 2:137; JR 66: All birth dates are from Melancon It should be noted that the history of the Illinois country Jesuits is not without lacunae or other problems. Personal histories of some of the missionaries are remarkably clear, others are not. This list therefore represents a critical synthesis of various Jesuit sources and publications, including the Jesuit Relations, the writings of Camille de Rochemonteix, and primary documents including vows. Also represented are the compilations of Pierre Margry, and letters of non-jesuit priests, etc. It should be added, as a cautionary note, that each of the published works has its own occasional problem.

12 282 MICHAEL MCCAFFERTY Some of the above are disqualified on the basis of chronology (both Marquette and Allouez were dead before Pinet arrived, and therefore could not have added anything to Pinet's book). Handwriting samples exclude the greatest number of candidates, including Rale, Gravier, Pinet, Marest and Mermet. Some were involved continuously with people who spoke Miami, not Illinois, dialects (e.g., Aveneau, Chardon) - and there is evidence in the "Gravier" dictionary clearly indicating its material did not come from a Miami dialect. 12 Several others (Limoges, Baurie, d'outreleau) were not among the Miami or Illinois peoples long enough, it seems, to copy out the huge "Gravier" dictionary or, in fact, to have learned the Miami-Illinois language well enough to compose it. As evidenced by his entries in Pinet's book, its writer was quite familiar with Miami-Illinois. French spelling provides another important factor to consider. Robert Vezina (personal communication, 2004) has pointed out that the "Gravier" dictionary contains conventions common in the 17th century but quite old-fashioned by the 18th. In other words, the writer used antiquated spellings, including but not limited to the verb 'know' spelled with <gn>, such as <cognoistre> and <incognu>, a practice already criticized at the beginning of the 17th century, forms of the verb 'dry' with <ei>, such as <seicher> and <seichent>, and the word for 'nose' spelled <nes>, rather than modern <nez>. Pinet, who would have learned to write in the late 1660s, writes <connoitre> and <nez> but the stem for 'dry' is spelled in the old way with <ei>. Therefore, it would appear that the scribe of the "Gravier" dictionary, unless he grew up in an educational backwater, was born at least by This would leave us with only three possibilities: Binneteau, Aveneau, and deville. Binneteau, whose handwriting is not available, seems an unlikely candidate. Although his four years in the Illinois country would appear to have been enough time for him to copy out the dictionary, Binneteau was an extremely busy, overworked, often destitute and malnourished missionary whose physical condition continued to deteriorate the longer he 12. Masthay is probably for the most part correct in identifying the dialect of the "Gravier" dictionary as Kaskaskia; however, the Peoria dialect is probably also well represented, since the earliest missionaries spent a great deal of time with that group. That said, with so little difference among the Miami and Illinois dialects in general, differences among Illinois dialects, such as Peoria and Kaskaskia, would have been minimal.

13 THE LATEST MIAMI-ILLINOIS DICTIONARY AND ITS AUTHOR 283 stayed in the mission. The "Gravier" dictionary, however, exhibits a leve of care and organization that suggests that it was written a tete reposee, in a relatively relaxed atmosphere. Equally significant is the fact that the very handwriting of its principal scribe indicates that he was possessed of a considerable degree of vitality. Could this have been Julien Binneteau? If he is the scribe, Binneteau had to have written out the dictionary before 1699, the year of his death, and had to have added his comments to Pinet's dictionry when both were living in the Illinois country between 1696 and During their days among speakers of Miami-Illinois, Binneteau mostly resided among the Peoria and Pinet mostly among the Wea. However, for a few months they lived together at the Wea mission on the lower Chicago River and spent short periods of time together elsewhere during 1 "X the winter months. Why Binneteau would have felt inclined to add entries to Pinet's ownfield manual is, of course, another question. Aveneau, for different reasons, also appears to be an unlikely candidate. He worked only among Miami but the evidence indicates that the "Gravier" dictionary represents one or more Illinois dialects of the Miami-Illinois language. Indeed, the book is fastidious in highlighting a handful of specifically Miami terms. Born in 1670, deville appears to be the only other possibility to fit this scenario but, again, apparently the Jesuit archive in Rome has no handwriting sample for him. It could be argued that the dictionary was compiled by one of the earliest and oldest Jesuits in the Illinois country in the 1600s, using an oldfashioned way of spelling - perhaps even by Jacques Gravier, to whom it is commonly attributed - and was only transcribed later into its current form. This scenario implies, however, that, contrary to expectations, the scribe did not modernize the spelling. The very format of the "Gravier" dictionary suggests that it was going to be a template for publication, or at the very least serve locally as the definitive guide to the Illinois language. For this reason, it seems odd that a young scribe would not have modernized the spellings. That having being said, in the outside chance that the dictionary was in fact transcribed by a later-arriving Jesuit, a number of them can still be excluded on the basis of handwriting (debeaubois, Tar- 13. For Binneteau and Pinet together at the Wea mission and elsewhere, see St-Cosme to Laval, 2 January 1699, in Baillargeon 2002:53, 57, 58; also, Kellogg 1917:346.

14 284 MICHAEL MCCAFFERTY tarin, Meurin, Watrin, desalleneuve), or insufficient time (de Limoges, Baurie, d'outreleau, Senat, Devernai). The only candidates who might have arrived later and stayed long enough, yet without modernizing the spelling, would be Guymonneau, dekereben, Dumas, Magendie, Fourre, Guyenne, Vivier, le Petit, Pernelle, Aubert and delamorinie. The fact that the "Gravier" dictionary is carefully printed may present a challenge in handwriting identification. However, in Pinet's dictionary we are fortunate to have the unknown writer's cursive hand, which should allow us to compare it with the handwriting of Binneteau, Aveneau, deville, or one of the others in question. The cursive script in Pinet's dictionary shows a strong resemblance to the signature of Joseph- Francois de Kereben, however, his signature alone does not allow for a positive identification; a larger sampling of his handwriting is needed to confirm that he was the scribe. 14 Moreover, de Kereben appears to have been born much too late to have learned to spell modern <connaitre> (oldish <connoitre>) as antiquated <cognoistre>, etc. In conclusion, based on the evidence of his handwriting and philological and historical factors, Pierre-Francois Pinet was the author of what has been referred to since its discovery in 1999 as the St-Jerome dictionary, which he composed between 1696 and Some or much of Pinet's material appears to represent the Wea dialect of Miami, for a variety of reasons: (1) In the Illinois country Pinet spent about half of his time with the Wea, thefirstmiami-illinois-speaking group he worked with. (2) There is a seemingly non-illinois dialect place name entry in his book. (3) Pinet's book was composed in thefield- not a revised and polished work - and apparently created by someone fresh in the process of learning Miami-Illinois. (4) Costa's research presents evidence for a Miami dialect origin for some of the entries. Pinet's contemporaries Gabriel Marest and Jean Mermet added to his book after his death, the former between 1700 and 1714 and the latter between 1704 and The fourth hand that appears in Pinet's dictionary belongs to the principal scribe of the dictionary attributed to Gravier. In the latter, curiously, French words are spelled in a fashion that suggests 14. The Archivum R o m a n u m Societatis Iesu (ARSI) maintains afile of handwriting samples which may ultimately permit an identification.